Bruno Pieters

Backstage, Bruno Pieters said he wanted to work on two aspects of French couture: flou and tailoring. The Belgian designer opened with the former—a sheer nude tube dress with draping and folding below the waist that protected the model's privacy. Building up from there, he added more tucks and pleats to the bodices of body-con dresses in makeup colors and wrapped ribbons of pink chiffon around the torso of an abbreviated little white frock. When tailoring entered the equation, it followed the same geometric lines as in Pieters' recent collections: Cropped and fitted jackets had hexagonal short sleeves; miniskirts and rompers came with standout pockets that echoed the shape of the shoulders and gave his girls a perplexing X-shaped silhouette. A pair of crystal-encrusted sleeveless V-back dresses were bright spots; still, the whole thing came off a bit like a graduate student's exercise. The collection displayed a real devotion to craft—all that sheer fabric put the rigor and discipline of Pieters' cutting and pattern-making on display—but in the end, there wasn't enough that a girl could really wear.